Mobile phone services and students, what do they want from the library?

Andrew Walsh

Abstract

Student attitudes towards the libraries use of mobile technologies in general, and SMS (text messaging) in particular were investigated using a series of focus groups during Autumn 2009 at the University of Huddersfield. The results suggest that students do not feel that text messaging services would be intrusive or unwelcome and they felt overwhelmingly positive towards services such as overdue reminders direct to their phones. The results also suggest that libraries should concentrate on introducing text messaging based systems initially, with other services likely to be well received only if students can see an obvious and immediate benefit to using them. The research was carried out thanks to the Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) research award, 2009.